Your PDF and app magazines are costing you more than you think. Discover why a web magazine library costs less and delivers more.
Recently Google publicly told publishers that they strongly encourage flexible sampling with their paywalls, through the use of metered paywalls and lead-in. You’re likely familiar with metered paywalls where the user gets to access a certain number of articles before being asked to subscribe, and the lead-in paywall shows some content of an article but not all.
Regardless of whether you decide to use a flexible paywall, there’s one thing we definitely see necessary to take this next step if you ever wanted to: a web magazine library. That is, magazine content that is read and digested in an HTML format from behind paywall that is not indexed. Without it, if you’re only offering a PDF archive of your content, or a digital magazine app, you’d completely miss out on any opportunity to offer a flexible paywall.
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But that’s not the only reason to have a web magazine library. You’ll make more money with one, and save even more. Here’s how:
1. The library content is free (for you). The content already exists, which means the content is free. You might have thousands to hundreds of thousands of articles of free content. The content still needs to be webified and edited, but it’s now technically free, or at least paid for.
2. New orders don’t cost anything to distribute. Think about your costs to distribute print magazines. Then forget them when it comes to web magazines. Every month, or week, or however often you update, your web magazine library will get updated with the newest content. Otherwise, once your back archives and articles are uploaded, they don’t need to be updated, and you can generate additional revenue from this platform without added effort or costs to deliver the product.
3. Your web magazine library content doesn’t need to be optimized for the web (sort-of). This is the first and only time we won’t tell you to optimize something for the web – because if all of this content is behind a wall and is not indexed, so Google can’t search it anyway. That means you don’t need to solicit or hire an SEO to prepare this content for Google, which saves an hour or more worth of time per article. However, if you are using Google’s suggested lead-in paywall, you may want to optimize the title, subhead, and the first couple paragraphs. If you’re running a metered paywall, even when not optimized fully, your content will generate some random search engine and social traffic based on its native language structure.
4. Your web magazine library is an upsell. Once your library is jam-packed with content for decades, you have a pretty lofty upsell. With contrast pricing, you can add significant additional revenue. Imagine you sell a print magazine for $24.97, app magazine for $19.97, and the web magazine library for $29.97. But you can get all three for $34.97. Now, $34.95 contrasted with $19.95 seems pricey, doesn’t it? But if you’re like most buyers, you’ll also spot the $29.95 price compared to the $34.95 price – and now $34.95 doesn’t seem so high. Hey, it’s just $5 more … and you can get what’s behind Door #1, Door #2 and Door #3 for that extra $5! Might as well go for it!
5. Once digitized, your web magazine is an excellent back-up plan. How many publishers that you know have gone digital to cut overhead costs? We don’t see those companies as failing, we see them as leveraging the Internet to improve revenues and profits. In fact, many of them have made out so well with their web magazines and digital magazine apps, that they could afford going back into the print business!
Mequoda is the creator of the first-ever web magazine. We’re also the most well-known consultancy and development company that specifically transforms magazines into multiplatform publishers. We have built our own Haven CXMS, a state-of-the-art SaaS tool built, owned and maintained by Mequoda to enable all the functionality that multiplatform publishing businesses need to be successful and profitable.
If you’d like to discuss how we can help you build a profitable magazine subscription website with a web magazine, please schedule a no-obligation appointment with me.
